Hamarana

I was awake half the night. It was hot, my airconditioning doesn’t cope with extremes of heat, and the cats were restless. So, came the morning, I decided to head to the beach before dawn. The following photograph is of a promise. Of more heat, of oppressive humidity, and a day so hot it felt like the atmosphere was on fire.

A thunderstorm later in the day has helped a little, but not much. Tomorrow, more of the same.

Oh the frustration of it all. I’ve waxed lyrical on the iPhone for ages… but I have had it for almost 18 months now and am currently thinking I would prefer to have a traditional style of phone (don’t pass out, you lot!).

It is not that I don’t like the iPhone, but its just that I wish that I had a phone with all of the iphone features, but with a traditional keypad for making calls. I actually don’t like the touchscreen for that purpose. Weird, huh… Initially I thought it was because there is no physical feedback from the keys… but thats not it. Its a simple thing. I want to be able to hold the phone in my hand and input a number with the thumb of that hand, as I do with “ordinary” phones.

A simple solution, you might think… get an ordinary phone. The trouble is, I am a texting demon (well, not so much anymore) and I thoroughly detest texting on a standard phone keypad.

So whats the solution? A phone like the Samsung Blackjack? Or a Nokia E71 or similar? I think that I would be in the same boat. I would still need two hands to dial a number. Perhaps an E51 (I’m leaning toward this, as my text needs have almost dissipated… perhaps I can just deal with it once every so often)… or… and I am not sure if these will do the job, one of the HTC phones with a combination of standard keypad for calls, and a touchscreen for texting? I don’t know. What I do know is that the iPhone is on its way to being used only for applications and as an iPod.

I guess I shouldn’t be too distressed about it, its had a really good run, better than most other phones I have had. And I will still be able to use it with wifi.

But.. I suppose you could say… I’m over it.

I don’t know how many of my readers are avid Windows users, but they may want to have a play with the newest version of Windows. Its out now, its only a beta so downloader beware… You can NOT use it to upgrade XP. You *can* use it to upgrade Vista but only if you have SP1 installed. Microsoft recommend a clean install so if you have a spare machine, I would be looking to that as the testbed. Its a 2.6G download so if your data allowance is skating the edge, wait til your next month rollover.

I have heard many positive remarks about W7 (as opposed to what I heard about Vista) and am looking forward to giving it a try on my Mac Bootcamp Partition. Once I am into my next month’s data allowance. It will probably be out of beta by then Beta is the only free version and it is time limited, so get it while its hot, and before it expires.

Windows 7 website: includes beta download links